As noted in the referenced applications, electronic equipment, particularly modern data processing systems, use high density packaging of integrated circuits. The latter are installed in connectors which in turn are mounted on an interconnection board. The electrical contacts within the connector provide electrical circuit paths between the integrated circuit package leads and the conductive pads of the interconnection board.
In any electronic system, the need arises for checking the electrical integrity of the circuits even before they are energized to determine if they fall within prescribed design ranges. The results of such examination are used to pinpoint either present or future malfunctions of the equipment. In a high density packaging system of the type mentioned hereinbefore, the individual checking of the numerous integrated circuit pin connections becomes a complex and time consuming task. Continuity checks and impedance measurements are necessarily performed manually for each of the pins. The present invention obviates this difficulty by automatically checking all of the pins of an integrated circuit chip in sequence and determining whether or not the circuit nets associated with the pins are within established tolerances.